Nofollow backlinks and Google

[awtprod]

I was checking out the backlinks of some of my competitors in market samurai and I'm seeing tons of backlinks from places that I thought were nofollow. I saw backlinks from blogspot, wikipedia, twitter, etc. Are these "counting" towards their backlink count or are they just recognizing that the links are there. I'm really confused.

[JermeyBrown]

The NoFollow tag was introduced by Google to stop blog spammers getting lots of free backlinks by commenting on peoples’ blog posts. Blogging software such as WordPress automatically implemented the NoFollow tag on comment links so (in theory) the average blogger would receive much less blog comment spam.

[Brad Callen]

Just because they are showing up in Yahoo Site Explorer's back links doesn't mean much. We still don't know exactly how they are handled by the search engines.

Some back link scanners will show you any tagging associated with the link (like nofollow) and then you can get a better idea of which links are regular and which are nofollowed. My belief is still that these links are inferior to the rest.

[D Baker]

You can SEO SpyGlass and see all the important information about your competitors links. You will also see if the link are nofollow.

[bayley]

Nofollow backlinks will be added to all search engines, but they are indifferent to the upper hierarchy you then try to get backlinks from dofollow sites.

[hotftuna]

If a site has a ton of backlinks from dofollow, and practically none from nofollow, this target site could be easily flagged as trying to manipulate SE results.

I'm not saying that G or other SE's are slapping sites for this, just that they can.

How hard would it be for any SE to find a normal ratio range dofollow/nofollow?

Bottom line, get links regardless of this tag.

[Nemanja]

Do-follow and no-follow is only about google and passing PR which is only one ranking factor out of 200+.

Also google is not the only search engine and like hotfuna said id you are only building all do-follow links they can get you in trouble.

Nemanja

[hotftuna]

Originally Posted by Nemanja

Do-follow and no-follow is only about google and passing PR which is only one ranking factor out of 200+.

Also google is not the only search engine and like hotfuna said id you are only building all do-follow links they can get you in trouble.

Nemanja

I don't pretend to be as smart as an algo engineer.

The way I do SEO is by putting myself in the position of an algo engineer, and try to figure what I would look for with any info available in the public domain.

While other SE's besides G may not use nofollow for passing link juice, why would they not use it to determine link spam if they are able to?

[paulgl]

Come on people.

Don't build dofollow links? (There is no friggin dofollow. Google chooses to
follow what it wants)

You need some nofollow links? If you have too many non nofollow links,
google penalizes you??????????????????????

Where in world do you people get this stuff?

But please take your advice. Build as many nofollow links as you can!

nofollow links can be valuable. But I am sure not going to waste my time
getting them except for normal web activity that I do in the course of
a day.

We've got one more voodoo seo: You need a balance of nofollow links
or google penalizes you.

Does the list ever end????????

Paul

[Amenda Jessera]

Normally what I do is, I always get dofollow + nofollow backlinks to given sites, Most of the cases, I used to get about 70-80% of dofollow and 20-30% of nofollow, That really makes the link building process naturally in the eye of our bigggggg "G" and always, Mr."G" gives me good ranks as a result, However, when I had begun SEO, I too had stick with dofollow, later, I changed my mind and getting success

[OrganicSeoGuru]

It all depends on the domain, niche and goal, but I typically put 10%-15% of my back-link efforts to no follow links, and especially to pages that are hyper keyword competitive.

I have personally never regretted it for a few reasons, the most important being it helps keep my backlink profile look somewhat natural, but often those "worth less" no follow links actually have a lot of other bloggers, social media hero's, etc organically link out to my content. This further increases my incoming links while further normalizing my link graph.

[paulgl]

Of course nofollow can get traffic. Of course nofollow can be
valuable. Of course nofollow can expand your footprint. Of course
nofollow can lead to better things.

That's not the point.

Getting nofollow in some magic ratio to fend off the powers of
google is just plain silly.

100% of your time should be getting non nofollow links. If some
nofollow links can't be helped in that process, that's just the nature
of backlinking.

If you have exhausted all non nofollow backlink opportunities, then
man you'd better get with it.

Also google is not the only search engine and like hotfuna said id you are only building all do-follow links they can get you in trouble.

Man you have got to be kidding! But, rock on!

Paul

[Smyth Danielson]

Nofollows still show up, the question is what value they have. I'd rather have no follows than none at all. I think it is definitely ok to have a mix of them however because it looks natural and provides link diversity which I'm big on.

[bigK]

MS shows links from yahoo site explorer that shows no follow links. This does not mean that these link count or that they do not count. Personally I think that the no-follow links count at least to some degree. Also, it is natural for a site to have some no-follow links.

[OnlineMarketingSys]

Well Google has publically stated that they do not count nofollow backlinks, and was one of their ways to help curb spam. Though not all search engines, follow the same methodology such as Yahoo,ect.

One thing to keep in mind however, is that it's unnatural for every one of your links to be nofollow. So while you shouldn't spend time or effort targetting them, its still wise to get a couple dozen no follow links as part of your overall SEO strategy.

I should also point out, that as of wordpress 3, the default value of comments is all NOFOLLOW. So just keep that in mind, when doing blog commenting.

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by OnlineMarketingSys

Well Google has publically stated that they do not count nofollow backlinks,

Nofollow absolutely 100% counts towards your rankings.

Anyone that has actually tested this method aside from following G's word knows this.

Some of the largest adult websites prove this, for reference.

[yukon]

Here is a tip I sometimes use for nofollow backlinks.

Instead of anchor-text on the nofollow, If you leave the entire URL, G will pick up the text & associate your site with the site you leave the text/url on.

This will bypass any tags that the backlink/site has to block backlinks.

G has no possible way to determine If you posted the text/url, or the guy that owns the site you want a backlink from.

Granted it may not have the power of a real backlink with anchor-text, but like I said it's still easy to associate your blog/site with a high PR site.

[awtprod]

Wow! Great information posted here. I was just curious since a lot of the top spots for my keyword had nofollow links. FYI, I'm still posting my link to nofollow sites since those are the sites that I frequent anyway.

[OnlineMarketingSys]

Originally Posted by mgtarheels

Nofollow absolutely 100% counts towards your rankings.

Anyone that has actually tested this method aside from following G's word knows this.

Some of the largest adult websites prove this, for reference.

I think you misunderstood my statement. I was saying that if you have a choice to go after a dofollow link vs nofollow, then 100% you should go after dofollow links. Sure every link counts, but a dofollow link will count more everyday over a nofollow link.

As for why adult websites are able to rank well, its the sheer number of links. Any decent ranked adult or pharma website has hundreds of thousands of dofollow,nofollow,edu links all adding to its link juice.

[humbledmarket]

If I'm not mistaken blogspot links are do follow aren't they?

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by OnlineMarketingSys

I think you misunderstood my statement. I was saying that if you have a choice to go after a dofollow link vs nofollow, then 100% you should go after dofollow links. Sure every link counts, but a dofollow link will count more everyday over a nofollow link.

As for why adult websites are able to rank well, its the sheer number of links. Any decent ranked adult or pharma website has hundreds of thousands of dofollow,nofollow,edu links all adding to its link juice.

You're making very, very uninformed statements.

[OnlineMarketingSys]

Originally Posted by mgtarheels

You're making very, very uninformed statements.

Well I am not here to argue with you. I have been doing SEO long enough both for my own campaigns and my clients. So hey, if your approach is to target a bunch of nofollow blog links, than all be it.

Though Google's own staff has come out several times and publically stated that nofollow links have far less worth than dofollow links. And if the link is worthy, than the site's webmaster should have created a dofollow link. So to each their own, but I'll stick to what Google has publically stated and has been proven time and time again to work. Not only for my own sanity, but also for my clients who constantly bring up what they read about from credible news sources, including whats been published by the big G.

[mscofield]

Try to get Backlinks from Dofollow Blogs and any source where from you are building backlinks.

[backspace9]

I would recommend on focusing on dofollow. Keep in mind some sites you get links from are going to convert to NOFOLLOW later anyway.

[Zen2health]

I have seen people get pages indexed by using only nofollow links. The experiment generally involves getting a page to rank for a search term that's not on the page itself or in the meta data etc.

Usually, these experiments are pretty lame because they get the page to rank for some type of misspelling since it's easier.

[HypnoHugh]

Ryan Deiss claims in his Authority Codes report that he has found no difference between Do Follow and No Follow backlinks.

You can check it out and other useful resources here:

The Whole System | Perpetual Traffic Formula

Well worth checking out.

[Wesley Atkins]

Don't let yourself get confused over it. The fact is, no-one really knows how Google exactly treats NoFollow links...

But it doesn't matter.

It just requires a shift in your mindset...

Stop thinking about links as things that will increase your ranking in the search engines...

Think more along the lines of gaining links for traffic purposes, this in turn will drive more eyeballs to your site, which in turn brings more natural links if your content is good and you provide good value to your marketplace.

I would choose a nofollowed link from Wikipedia that drives me 50 hits per day over a PR4 on topic link anyday of the week...

[yanivkalfa]

Google say No follow links doesnt count but. i dont believe that imo they do count and do actually benefit you

[Rakesh]

It'd probably better to make sure that you don't rely 100% on just one form of links, since it's unclear how google actually operate.

If you balance out the different types of links you're covering your bases.

Analysing your stats after a while however should allow you to gain some more informed knowledge on what is actually going on.

[askloz]

Yeh, Yahoo still counts nofollow links in its rankings.

Originally Posted by Brad Callen

Just because they are showing up in Yahoo Site Explorer's back links doesn't mean much. We still don't know exactly how they are handled by the search engines.

Some back link scanners will show you any tagging associated with the link (like nofollow) and then you can get a better idea of which links are regular and which are nofollowed. My belief is still that these links are inferior to the rest.

[jhonsean]

There are conversations and explanations that I've been read in this thread for what I had observed is a well balanced in quality backlinks will do with regard to no follow and do follow links.

[webbill]

the same thing happens with me aswell but it totally depends on the traffic of the website even where your or your competitors website's link is place the more hite he get SE may consider it Do- follow due to its reputation.

[Andrew James]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Come on people.

Don't build dofollow links? (There is no friggin dofollow. Google chooses to
follow what it wants)

You need some nofollow links? If you have too many non nofollow links,
google penalizes you??????????????????????

Where in world do you people get this stuff?

But please take your advice. Build as many nofollow links as you can!

nofollow links can be valuable. But I am sure not going to waste my time
getting them except for normal web activity that I do in the course of
a day.

We've got one more voodoo seo: You need a balance of nofollow links
or google penalizes you.

Does the list ever end????????

Paul

I like your style.